my psu EXPLODED

I had a cap explode in a 850W Ultra X4. And it dies sound like a gunshot, and it let out a stream of blue smoke. Everything survived excepting the onboard sound on the MB. Weirdest thing for it to take out.

Hi,
Just be glad it wasn't like Live free or Die Hard

Like these guys lol:


It did sound like that, oddly I didn't see any visual damage on the caps. I could try to read the farads to see if they failed. not sure if my cheap-o harbor fright multimeter has that feature.

Just don't breath the fumes after you blow them caps up lol

Based on that last sentence I'm not sure if you're serious with this post lol

*Low heat* being like 60-90C. The dry heat will do wonders to remove any condensation and the temperature isn't even close to reflowing any solder. Even 5000 hour 95C caps should be able to deal with a slow heat up/ cool down thermal cycle from an oven/heat gun in this low temp range.

I wouldn't expect anyone to do this unless you were leaving your electronic device in a known humid/low temp area that would have a significant risk of condensation though.

AFAIK, "canned air" containing propellants like difluoroethane is perfectly fine for cleaning dust off circuit boards so long as you avoid water condensation from cooling the PCB with long blasts of the propellant due to its very low temperature in its compressed liquid state.

I have had quite a few PSU's blow up sounding like a gunshot before. Usually its one of the large capacitors shorting out somehow, but not always. Most of the ones I've seen were lower quality units though, such as Apevia or Raidmax cheapies. It's kind of like playing Russian Roulette when working inside of a computer equipped with those type of units.

Note: I've never personally seen any PSU's explode to the point where shrapnel escapes the casing though, so at least nothing too dangerous. I have seen them melt though on an accidental 240v short; that was kind of fun.

Sounds like a big cap or mosfet blew up OP

Wow that 1 looks like it's bulk capacitor really blew up, that's the top of it there the yellow part inside the hole. That's crazy it would get through the sheet metal like that. I usually hear of safety testing for fire resistance, IDK how much ballistics testing they do LOL

I've killed PSUs before but have never had one go boom like that, that's crazy!

In the slot A Athlon days, I was young and didn’t have much money so I built a 900 Slot A Thunderbird rig in a Compaq display case from Radio Shack they sold for $5 as opposed to throwing it away. Had an MSI motherboard, original GeForce (I used to buy them with bad fans at a computer show and fix them) and the cheapest $9 300W PSU you could buy that was in this flimsy galvanized steel case that you could almost bend by hand. Was playing a game one hot July day and even though I had the AC on... Kaboom, thick gray smoke everywhere. Granted the PSU lasted quite a while. Everything survived though.